Month: November 2016

Paul Newman starred in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke as Lucas Jackson, a rebellious man who becomes a hero to his fellow prison camp members for his apparent fearlessness. Over time, he gets beaten down physically and emotionally when his numerous attempts to escape are thwarted, and he eats an insane amount of eggs.

George Kennedy—who won an Oscar for his performance—played Dragline, the chain gang leader who grows to respect Luke and eventually becomes his best friend. The film also boasted great performances from Strother Martin (Captain), Dennis Hopper (Babalugats), Wayne Rogers (Gambler), Harry Dean Stanton (Tramp), and others. Here are some facts about the anti-establishment classic.

1. IT WAS WRITTEN BY AN EX-CON.

While in the Merchant Marine, Donn Pearce was caught counterfeiting money and thrown in a French prison. He escaped, returned to the U.S., and became a safe-cracker. A waitress ratted him out and he spent two years on a prison road gang where he heard about a Luke Jackson—someone who was an excellent poker player, a banjo expert, and who had once eaten 50 boiled eggs for a bet. He wrote about him in his book Cool Hand Luke, which was published in 1965. Pearce sold the movie rights to Warner Bros. for $80,000, and got an additional $15,000 to write the screenplay.

But it was his first time trying to write a screenplay, and Frank Pierson was later hired to rework the draft. Pearce appeared in the movie as the convict Sailor and was the production’s technical adviser. He punched someone out on the final day on set and was not invited to the film premiere.

2. JACK LEMMON OR TELLY SAVALAS COULD HAVE PLAYED LUKE.

Jack Lemmon’s production company, Jalem Productions, produced the movie, so Lemmon had first dibs on playing the lead, but he recognized that he wasn’t right for the part. Telly Savalas was then cast as Luke, but he was in Europe filming The Dirty Dozen, and since he refused to fly, the production had to look elsewhere for the starring role to get started on time.

3. PAUL NEWMAN STUDIED WEST VIRGINIANS TO GET THE ACCENT DOWN.

Newman heard about the project and asked for the part before he had even read the script. Newman, a Cleveland native, spent a weekend in Huntington, West Virginia, with businessman Andy Houvouras, on the recommendation of a mutual friend who was the director of the U.S. Office for Economic Opportunity. Houvouras drove Newman to various counties, where Newman talked to residents and recorded them. Everybody apparently knew who he was with one exception:

“He went to St. Joe High School to go pick up my sister Anne, and this nun walked up to see what the commotion was,” Houvouras’s son recalled decades later. “Dad said, ‘I would like you to meet Paul Newman,’ and the nun said, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr. Newman, what do you do for a living?’ She had no idea who he was.”

4. IT WAS SET IN FLORIDA, BUT FILMED IN STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA.

A crew went to Tavares Road Prison in Tavares, Florida, to take photographs and measurements so it could be rebuilt in Stockton. A dozen buildings were constructed, including barracks, a mess hall, and guard houses. Spanish moss imported from Louisiana hung from the trees. The actors stayed at the local Holiday Inn. Their mode of transportation to the set and back to their rooms were the trucks used in the movie. They rode on the backs of them.

5. NEWMAN JUDGED THE SHOOT WITH HIS NOSE.

Apparently, Newman had a good feeling about the film. “There’s a good smell about this,” Newman told a visitor on the set one day. “We’re gonna have a good picture.”

6. THE BOXING MATCH TOOK THREE DAYS TO SHOOT.

George Kennedy said he and Newman were both completely worn out from their boxing match—Kennedy from the fighting, Newman from the fighting and falling onto hard ground for three days in a row.

7. BETTE DAVIS WAS THE ORIGINAL CHOICE TO PLAY LUKE’S MOTHER.

Bette Davis turned down the chance to play Luke’s mother, Arletta, which was a one-scene role. It went to Jo Van Fleet (East of Eden) instead, even though she was only 11 years older than Newman. For her single day of shooting, Van Fleet sat on a tree stump, 200 yards from everyone else, looking over her lines. Harry Dean Stanton recalled that Van Fleet asked him to sing to her before her take, and it made her cry.

8. THE DIRECTOR WOULDN’T ALLOW THE ACTORS’ WIVES ON SET.

To get the men to feel like they were truly members of a chain gang, director Stuart Rosenberg banned women from the set. Even Joy Harmon (“Lucille”) was kept away from the cast. She stayed in a hotel all alone for two days and shot her scene with just Rosenberg.

9. THE CONVICTS WERE REALLY COLD DURING THE CAR WASH SCENE.

Harmon didn’t realize how suggestive the scene in which the men watch her wash her car was until she saw it in the theater.

“I just figured it was washing the car. I’ve always been naive and innocent,” she said. “I was acting and not trying to be sexy. Maybe that’s why the scene played so well. After seeing it at the premiere, I was a bit embarrassed.”

When Rosenberg shot the convicts in the ditch watching Lucille, he used a stand-in: an overcoat-wearing 15-year-old girl. Despite the coat, Kennedy remembered her teeth were chattering from the cold weather. He also wrote, “Those guys shivering in a ditch did some great acting.”

10. NEWMAN HAD TROUBLE LEARNING TO PLAY THE BANJO.

Originally, the scene where Newman plays “Plastic Jesus” as an ode to his mother was scheduled for the beginning of the shoot, but after Newman insisted on learning the instrument, Rosenberg delayed it a few weeks. When they tried it and the playing was unsatisfactory, it was bumped until the next to last day of production. Newman and Rosenberg had a shouting match after Newman still couldn’t get it down. In what Kennedy remembered as a “tense, electrically charged, quiet” place, Newman tried again. When he finished, Rosenberg called “Print.” Newman insisted he could do better. “Nobody could do it better,” Rosenberg replied.

It was Stanton who taught Newman how to play “Plastic Jesus.”

11. THE STUDIO DEMANDED TO SEE NEWMAN’S BLUE EYES.

Cinematographer Conrad Hall said the studio drove him “insane,” and that his filming techniques were repeatedly questioned. Eventually, they explained that he wasn’t showcasing Newman’s famous eyeballs enough. He had to shoot a scene four times before shooting Newman “correctly.”

12. FRANK PIERSON WROTE A WHOLE BACKSTORY FOR THE CAPTAIN TO EXPLAIN ONE FAMOUS LINE.

“The phrase just sort of appeared on the page,” Pierson said of the film’s famous “What we’ve got here is … failure to communicate” line. “I looked at it and thought, ‘Now that’s interesting,’ Then I thought, these words are going to be spoken by an actor (Strother Martin) who is playing a real redneck character who probably never went beyond high school, and it has a faintly academic feel to it, that line. I thought, people are going to question it.” So he wrote a backstory for the character.

According to Pierson’s biography of the Captain, Strother Martin’s character advanced in the prison guard ranks by taking courses in criminology, where he was “exposed to an academic atmosphere.” Donn Pearce still thought it was too intelligent of a statement to be made by the Captain, but Pierson won out.

13. NO, NEWMAN DID NOT EAT 50 EGGS.

About that now-iconic hardboiled egg scene? “I never swallowed an egg,” Newman admitted to a reporter.

George Kennedy got into the specifics in his book Trust Me: A Memoir. He wrote that Newman “consumed” as many as eight eggs. As soon as Rosenberg would yell “cut”, Newman vomited into nearby garbage cans.

14. GEORGE KENNEDY PAID FOR HIS OWN ADVERTISING TO HELP HIM WIN THE OSCAR.

Kennedy took out $5000 in trade paper advertising to campaign for an Oscar. The ad read “George Kennedy—Supporting” over a still from the movie of Dragline carrying Luke. Even so, Kennedy was still surprised when he did take home the statue for Best Supporting Actor—so much so that he hadn’t even prepared a speech.

15. DONN PEARCE DIDN’T THINK PAUL NEWMAN WAS RIGHT FOR THE PART.

Though Newman received a lot of acclaim, and a Best Actor Oscar nomination, for playing the part of Luke, Pearce wasn’t impressed. “They did a lousy job and I disliked it intensely,” he said in 2011. Pearce thought Newman “was so cute looking. He was too scrawny. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes on the road.”

Julia Child, America’s original celebrity chef, was surprisingly relaxed about that most food-focused of national holidays, Thanksgiving. The author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking didn’t break out complicated recipes like stuffed duck or deconstructed turkey for Turkey Day. As friends and former guests at her Thanksgivings told The New York Times, she was quite down-to-earth as a host. 

Before the meal, she set out Goldfish crackers for folks to munch on, and made what she called “reverse martinis,” consisting of vermouth on the rocks with just a little bit of gin. She rarely used complicated spices, often opting for just salt and pepper, and instead of deconstructing her bird, she usually just popped the whole turkey in the oven. (For the curious cooks out there, she roasted it at 325°F.) For dessert, she served her Aunt Helen’s molasses-and-bourbon-laced pumpkin pie.

Her Thanksgiving advice to novice chefs often boiled down to some version of “relax.” 

“I even heard her tell people that turkey wasn’t meant to be served hot,” a former Child Thanksgiving guest told The New York Times. Hey, if Julia Child says it, it must be true! 

[h/t: The New York Times] 

Residents of Australia are used to avoiding dangerous wildlife. Now in addition to sharks, poisonous spiders, and cassowaries, Australians can include crows on their list of animals to look out for. As the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports, incidents of hostile crows swooping over passersby are on the rise.

The behavior is common in magpies around nesting season, but it’s rarely observed in crows. Dr. Darryl Jones, a behavioral ecologist with Griffith University in South East Queensland, told ABC he believes the crows are copying the actions of their avian neighbors. “There’ll be chicks in the nest, they’ve decided that the people walking past are a threat,” he said. He’s been able to witness the phenomenon firsthand, thanks to a nest of native Australian Torresian crows located on the building where he works. He said, “Now I walk outside my own building and get attacked by the bloody crows.”

The increased crow swooping that’s been reported throughout Gold Coast, Queensland could possibly be a result of urban development. As humans encroach on crow territory the birds become less fearful of our presence, emboldening them to attack.

Crows only spend about three weeks raising their young, so residents can look forward to the aerial onslaughts ending soon. But people shouldn’t take that as an excuse to antagonize the animals while they can: Crows remember the faces of people who wronged them and enlist their friends to help them enact vengeance. So if you make yourself the target of a crow grudge now, you may end up regretting it next year.

[h/t ABC]

Thanksgiving originated as a way to celebrate, and enjoy, all the fruits and vegetables harvested this time of year. But the fall harvest doesn’t let word lovers go hungry, as it yields a cornucopia of etymological roots as well. Feast on the bounty of these seasonal word origins.

1. ARTICHOKE

Artichoke ultimately comes from the Arabic al-harshuf, “the artichoke.” The word, and plant, passed into Spanish, Italian, and then English, as archicokk, in the 1530s. Speakers tried to explain its unusual name with folk etymologies: The plant’s center would choke anyone who tried to eat it, or it chokes the growth of other plants in the garden. These folk beliefs are preserved in the modern spelling.

2. AND 3. SCALLION AND SHALLOT

Scallions and shallots may be two different species of onion, but they share a common root: the Vulgar Latin cepa escalonia, the “Ascalonian onion.” Ascalon is modern-day Ashkelon, an Israeli coastal city and a historically important seaport, apparently, for trading the likes of scallions and shallots. The Latin cepa, for onion, is also the source of another name for the scallion, chive.

4. ONION

If we peel back the etymological layers of onion, we find the Latin unio, which named both a pearl and a type of onion. Unio probably sprouts from unus, Latin for “one,” the idea being that this vegetable’s layers all comprise a single whole.

5. FENNEL

Fennel looks like an onion, but it’s actually in the carrot family. Appearances, though, are still the key to the origin of this word. Fennel, which is documented in English as early as 700, comes from a diminutive form of Latin faenum, for hay, which the plant’s feathery foliage and aroma evokes.

6. CARROT

Speaking of carrots, this orange vegetable is rooted in the Greek karaton. The origin of the Greek word is unclear. It could be from an Indo-European root ker, for horn, thanks to its shape. Ker could also mean head, possibly alluding to the way the carrot grows—and making a red-headed carrot-top etymologically redundant.

7., 8., 9., AND 10. KALE, COLLARD, KOHLRABI, AND CAULIFLOWER

These seasonal superfoods have a super-etymology. Latin had a word caulis, for stem, stalk, or cabbage, which produced quite the lexical bumper crop.

Old Norse borrowed caulis as kal, source of the word kale and the cole in coleslaw. In English, cole itself was an old word for cabbage as well as other leafy greens, like colewort, which American English speakers came to pronounce as collard, hence collard greens.

Kohlrabi literally means “cabbage-turnip” in German, cultivating its kohl from an Italian descendant of the original Latin caulis. And cauliflower, from Modern Latin cauliflora, is simply “cabbage flower.”

11. CABBAGE

If Latin’s caulis means cabbage, what does cabbage mean? Head, from the Old French caboce, in turn from the Latin caput. It doesn’t take too much imagination to understand why the Romans so named this heavy and round vegetable.

12. TURNIP

A turnip is a neep that looks like its been “turned” into its round shape, or so some etymologists guess. Neep comes from the Latin napus, a kind of turnip.

13. PARSNIP

This vegetable was once believed to be a kind of turnip, and so was made to look like turnip as a word. (The parsnip is actually related to the carrot while the turnip is related to the cabbage.) Parsnip stems from pastinaca, the Latin name for the vegetable, which may be related to pastinum, a two-pronged tool used to harvest tubers like parsnips.

14. AND 15. RADISH AND RUTABAGA

The roots of these roots are “roots.” Radish comes from the Latin radix, a root, both botanically and metaphorically, as we can see in derivatives like radical and eradicate. This radix, according to Indo-European scholars, grows from a more ancient soil: wrad, believed to mean root or branch. Wrad is featured in another vegetal word: rutabaga, which English took from the Swedish rotabagge by the 1780s. Rotabagge literally means “root bag,” with bag a kind of bundle in Old Norse.

16. and 17. PUMPKIN AND SQUASH

If you thought turnips and parsnips were all mixed up, then have a look at pumpkin. English immediately carved pumpkin out of French and Latin roots. The word’s ending, -kin, is influenced by a Germanic suffix for “little,” also seen in words like napkin. The ultimate root is the Greek pepon, meaning “ripe” and related to its verb for “cook.”

A Greek pepon was a kind of melon enjoyed when ripe. And the word melon, squashed from the Greek melopepon, literally means “ripe apple.” So, etymologically, a pumpkin is a melon, which is an apple. Early British colonists applied the word pumpkin—which, to make things more confusing, is technically a fruit—for the type of squash they encountered in the Americas.

Squash has nothing to do with smashing pumpkins. The word is shortened from the Algonquian askutasquash, literally “green things that may be eaten raw,” as the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology glosses it.

18. POTATO

You say potato, I say batata. Christopher Columbus is said to have brought the word batata back from his voyages. The batata, probably from the Haitian Taíno language, was actually a kind of sweet potato. Later, Spanish conquistadors brought what we commonly think of as the potato back from South America, where it was called papa in the Quechuan language. Botanically, sweet potatoes and potatoes are completely unrelated, but that didn’t stop English speakers from confusing them by using the word potato as a common term.

19. YAM

Sweet potatoes aren’t a type of potato—and nor are they yams, even if we insist on calling them so. Yam crops up as inany in 1588, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, a borrowing of the Portuguese inhame or Spanish igname, possibly from a word in West African languages meaning “to eat.” Because of the slave trade, yam may have been directly borrowed from a West African language in American and Jamaican English.

20. BEET

Beet comes from the Old English bete, in turn from the Latin beta. These words just mean, for a refreshing change, beet. But even the humble beet has its baggage. The word was common in Old English but disappeared from the existing record until about the 1400s. It seems the English language didn’t much want to eat its vegetables in the late Middle Ages.

Anyone who has ever seen Cartoon Network’s surreal hit show Adventure Time knows that the Land of Ooo is a pretty delicious place. From bacon pancakes to candy townspeople, the show is a smorgasbord for the eyes. Now fans can get a taste of what they’ve been watching on television with Adventure Time: The Official Cookbook.

According to the product description, the book was discovered by Finn in the Founders’ Island Library. The old cookbook was filled with strange recipes for things like “lasagna” and “boiled eggs.” Many of the pages were lost, so Finn, along with Jake, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum, and the other citizens of Ooo, came together to create an extensive collection of fun recipes.

Whimsical cooks can make things like Prince Gumball’s pink and fluffy cream puffs, Jake’s everything burrito, and whatever apple-related baked good Tree Trunks has for us. The 112-page book has over 45 recipes, which are all separated by meal or course. The cookbook is available for presale on Amazon for $30 and will ship November 29. Now every meal can feel like it’s been prepared the best chefs in the Candy Kingdom.

There are only seven books in the original Harry Potter series, but there’s no shortage of swag related to J.K. Rowling’s wonderful wizarding world. Here are 11 gifts to give your favorite magic-loving muggle this holiday season.

1. HERMIONE’S TIME TURNER; $50

Hermione’s time turner was one of the most desirable items from the Harry Potter franchise—and it also made for a pretty stylish accessory. Now, you can rock Hermione’s powerful pendant with an authentic replica of the prop used in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The 24-karat gold-plated necklace features rotating inner rings with a miniature hourglass inside. The time turner is more of a collector’s item than a toy, and it comes with its own special display case for safe-keeping. Unfortunately time-traveling abilities aren’t included.

Find It: ThinkGeek

2. THE GEEKY CHEF COOKBOOK; $14

Ever wonder what butterbeer or pumpkin pasties taste like? The Geeky Chef Cookbook gives readers the chance to find out without making the trek to Hogsmeade. Written by fictional food chef and blogger Cassandra Reeder, this book includes treats from Harry Potter as well as other sci-fi and fantasy classics like Doctor Who, The Legend of Zelda, Star Trek, and Game of Thrones. The recipes have been tailored to only include non-magic ingredients, though the end results taste pretty magical.

Find It: Amazon

3. FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM: THE ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY; $15

J.K. Rowling’s break from the Harry Potter universe didn’t last long. She recently tried her hand at writing for film for the first time with her script for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The story follows magizoologist Newt Scamander in early 20th century New York, 70 years before the events of Harry Potter take place. After watching the story unfold on the big screen, fans can pick up a hardcover copy of the original screenplay.

Find It: Amazon

4. HARRY POTTER LIMITED EDITION MOLESKINE; $25

Writers who solemnly swear they’re up to no good will love this ruled notebook from Moleskine. The cover design features the Marauder’s Map with the layout of Hogwarts castle continuing on the inside. The book also comes with a set of Harry Potter stickers and a polyjuice potion ribbon bookmark to hold your place when mischief’s been managed.

Find It: Amazon

5. MAGICAL OBJECTS OF THE WIZARDING WORLD; $29

From the invisibility cloak to the sword of Gryffindor, the world of Harry Potter is full of fantastical objects. PopChartLab managed to fit the most comprehensive list possible onto one 18-inch-by-24-inch poster. The items are broken up into categories, including portkeys, legendary magical artifacts, and Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. If you can’t make it to Diagon Alley to pick up some items in person, this illustrated chart is the next best thing.

Find It: Pop Chart Lab

6. HARRY POTTER MAGICAL PLACES AND CHARACTERS COLORING BOOK; $13

This detailed coloring book lets you explore places from Harry Potter in a whole new way. It contains 96 pages of settings from the fictional universe, from the Dursleys’ living room to Hogwarts’s great hall. No wand is required to bring these scenes to life—just a set of colored pencils.

Find It: Amazon

7. I SOLEMNLY SWEAR…MISCHIEF MANAGED HEAT TRANSFORMING MUG; $20

There’s no better way to start the morning than with a cup of hot-brewed mischief. This Marauder’s Map-inspired 11-ounce mug changes color from black to white, reading “I solemnly swear I am up to no good,” and then “Mischief managed.” Any magic trick that’s also an excuse to drink coffee is a good one in our book.

Find It: Harry Potter Shop

8. HARRY POTTER CRATE; $35

If you’re having trouble picking out just one Harry Potter keepsake, Loot Crate offers bimonthly boxes of goodies for $35. Each crate offers exclusive and officially-licensed figures, memorabilia, and apparel relating to Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. Just input your Hogwarts house and t-shirt size to get a customized Loot Crate delivered straight to your door.

Find It: Loot Crate

9. HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS BATTLE; $49

With this cooperative deck building game you can take your love of Harry Potter to the next nerdy level. Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle is made up of seven sequential games that become increasingly difficult as they progress. As players defend Hogwarts from villains like Voldemort, they collect items, learn spells, and make allies along the way.

Find It: Amazon

10. HARRY POTTER SETS, DECORATED BY HOUSE; $275

The folks at Juniper Books have found a way to make your collection of Harry Potter books feel a little more personal. Each brand-new book in the set has been slipped into a jacket displaying original designs inspired by the four houses of Hogwarts. The covers depict the vibrant house colors as well as the animal mascots. Whether you’ve been sorted into Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin, these sets are a perfect way to show the world where your allegiances lie.

Find It: Juniper Books

11. HOGWARTS REVERSIBLE KNIT SCARF; $35

Whether you’re watching a quidditch match in the rain or strolling through the grounds of Hogwarts, it’s important to stay bundled up. This reversible scarf—officially-licensed by Warner Brothers—features the Hogwarts name and logo on both sides. You can wear the black and white side facing forward and then flip it over to reveal the same design in black and gray. The maroon, yellow, green, and blue tassels represent colors from all four Hogwarts houses, which means a Gryffindor will look just as sharp in it as a Slytherin.

Find It: ThinkGeek

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Sylvester Stallone wasn’t born a leading man. Complications at birth left the son of a hairdresser with nerve damage that slurred his speech and curled his lips into a permanent snarl. His childhood wasn’t easy. His parents fought constantly, and he and his brother slipped in and out of foster care. By high school, they’d moved back in with their mother in Philadelphia, but Stallone’s emotional problems followed him. He struggled academically and was expelled from multiple schools. The arts became his refuge. He spent his free time painting and writing poetry, but his real dream was the silver screen. By the time he was 18, he knew he wanted to act.

Stallone studied drama at the American College of Switzerland and then at the University of Miami, but then abandoned school to pursue a career in New York City. By his mid-twenties, he was getting by on odd jobs like cleaning lion cages and ushering at movie theaters. The bit parts he did manage to land were few and far between. Once, when funds were short, he took a role in an adult film to keep from living in a bus station. When Stallone landed bigger parts, it was because his drooping, stone-chiseled face made him the perfect heavy (Subway Thug No. 1. wasn’t an uncommon credit). By 1975, the 29-year-old actor was desperate for something bigger, so his agent sent him to the L.A. offices of Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, two producers who had a standing deal with United Artists.

The meeting didn’t go as planned. When Winkler and Chartoff met Stallone, they didn’t see a movie star. Dejected, Stallone had his hand on the doorknob when he turned and made one last pitch. “You know,” he said, “I also write.”

The script Stallone turned in was an underdog tale, the story of Rocky, a streetwise palooka who gets an unlikely opportunity to fight the heavyweight champion of the world. But the story of how the film itself got made is even more improbable.

Earlier that same year, a boxer named Chuck Wepner had silenced the world. Pitted 40:1 against the heavily favored Muhammad Ali, Wepner landed a blow that knocked Ali down. Though Ali ultimately knocked out Wepner in the 15th round, Stallone was riveted by those moments in which it seemed like Wepner stood a chance. When he sat down to write a screenplay, it took him just three days to dash it off.

Stallone centered his story around Rocky Balboa, a club boxer plucked from obscurity and eager to go the distance. But Rocky would have the odds stacked against him. Even his trainer, a salty old cynic named Mickey, would write him off—until a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fight against brash champion (and Ali stand-in) Apollo Creed arises.

To ground his story, Stallone drummed up a love interest for Rocky: Adrian, a shy pet store employee. The unlikely romance allowed the film to become as much a character study as a genre slugfest. But when Stallone’s wife, Sasha, read an early draft, she pushed him to sand down his hero’s rough edges even more. In the rewrites, Rocky, who had started out as a violent thug, emerged as a gentle and deceptively wise soul who, in the actor’s words, “was good-natured, even though nature had never been good to him.”

Impressed by the story’s heart, Winkler and Chartoff agreed to produce the film with United Artists, which gave them creative freedom for any picture budgeted under $1.5 million. But the studio balked. A boxing picture and all its trappings—extras, location, and arena shooting—just couldn’t be made for so little money. And with a nobody in the lead role, the flick seemed doomed to box office failure. Chartoff and Winkler countered by offering to make the movie for less than a million, promising to cover any overages out of pocket, and the producers sent the studio a print of Stallone’s recent independent film, The Lords of Flatbush, to seal the deal. With no one in the screening room to recognize him, the executives assumed handsome costar Perry King was the young nobody who had written the script.

Fine, they said. Go make your boxing movie.

The small budget meant that the production team had to get creative. Interiors were shot in L.A., since a full 28-day shoot in Philadelphia was too pricey. Instead, the team spent less than a week on location, quietly shooting exteriors using a nonunion crew. Driving around in a nondescript van, director John Avildsen would spot an interesting locale—a portside ship, a food market—and usher Stallone out to jog, sometimes for miles, while he rolled film. It wasn’t long before the actor gave up smoking.

The slim budget was evident everywhere. Stallone’s wardrobe was plucked from his own closet. His wife worked as the set photographer. But it was more than that— the movie’s finances also meant that the director had to be choosy about how many shots to film. A crucial scene where Rocky confesses his fears about the fight to Adrian (played by Talia Shire) was almost cut before Stallone begged the producers to give him just one take. The scene became the film’s emotional spine.

When the director proposed shooting a date between Rocky and Adrian at an ice rink, the producers laughed. A rink full of extras, combined with the costs of filming all the takes, seemed risky. But when Stallone convinced them of the scene’s worth, they wrote around it. In the movie, Rocky pays off a manager to let the duo skate in an empty rink. The result was easier to shoot and made for a beautiful metaphor: a clumsy dance between two misfits, each holding the other up.

But improvisation wasn’t always an option. For Rocky’s climactic bout with Creed, Stallone and actor Carl Weathers rehearsed five hours a day for a week. Though both were incredible physical specimens, neither had ever boxed and their earliest attempts were exhausting. (Ironically, only Burt Young, cast as Rocky’s sad-sack pal Paulie, had any actual ring experience: He was 14–0 as a pro.) When the director saw their first sparring efforts, he told Stallone to go home and write out the beats. Stallone returned with 14 pages of lefts, rights, counters, and hooks, all delivered using camera-friendly gloves too small to be legal in a real prizefight. As they practiced, Avildsen circled them with an 8mm camera, recording them to point out their weaknesses. He even zoomed in on Stallone’s waistline to remind him he needed to shape up.

Studying all that footage paid off. The fight was shot in front of 4,000 restless extras, corralled with the promise of a free chicken dinner. In the original ending, Rocky walks off with Adrian backstage. But composer Bill Conti’s score was so soaring that the director decided to reshoot the finale, despite having run out of funds. The producers paid for the overage themselves, allowing for the unforgettable final scene: Rocky in the ring, with Adrian fighting through the crowd to reach him, her hat pulled off by a crew member using fishing wire. The image freezes with Rocky embracing her— stopping at what Stallone later called the pinnacle of Rocky’s life. It was the perfect crescendo to an emotional journey—not only for Rocky, but for his alter ego.

The parallels between the actor’s story and Rocky’s were not lost on United Artists’ marketing strategist, Gabe Sumner. A clever publicist, Sumner knew he had quite the task in front of him: selling an old-fashioned boxing movie starring a nobody. Rocky’s competition at the box office didn’t make it any easier. Late 1976 was filled with blockbusters, and Stallone’s hero had to battle with King Kong, a new Dirty Harry sequel, and Carrie for ticket sales.

To compete, Sumner turned up the volume on Stallone’s shaggy-dog story. He sold the narrative about Stallone, a self-made actor-writer who had scraped and clawed his way to the top, as irresistibly American. And he bent the facts a little, too. In Sumner’s version, studio execs offered Stallone hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the script if they could cast a bankable movie star in the role. The impoverished actor, despite having a pregnant wife and just $106 in the bank, stood his ground. He hitchhiked to auditions. He had to sell his dog. But Stallone wasn’t a sellout, and this was his one chance to break through. The truth, Sumner later admitted, was that the studio had never met Stallone. None of it mattered, though—this was Madison Avenue mythmaking at its best.

The marketing strategy struck a chord. The actor’s tale so perfectly mirrored his onscreen role that the film received significant attention from both the media and audiences. And as word of mouth spread, Rocky became the highest-grossing picture of 1976, earning more than $117 million at the box office (the average ticket price at the time was just over $2). Audiences were equally captivated by the soundtrack. “Gonna Fly Now,” Conti’s trumpet-heavy theme, which accompanied Rocky’s training montage, moved more than 500,000 units.

Though some critics, including The New York Times’ reviewer, panned the flick for its sentimentality, most media embraced it. “Rocky KOs Hollywood,” crowed a Newsweek cover. The Academy agreed. At the 1977 Academy Awards, Rocky became the first sports film to win Best Picture, beating out heavy hitters Network, All the President’s Men, and Taxi Driver. Frank Capra and Charlie Chaplin wrote Stallone congratulatory letters. He became a bona fide movie star, anointed by two Hollywood legends who had built their careers making heroes of the common man.

Today, Rocky’s boxing trunks hang in the Smithsonian. Wedding ceremonies have been held at his statue near Philadelphia’s Museum of Art. Fans still run up the adjacent steps, mimicking his sprint to glory. As for Stallone, he was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011, making him the only actor ever to receive the honor. In his vision of a gentle slugger searching for an opportunity to shine despite the longest odds, Stallone crafted a story that continues to resonate with millions of moviegoers: It’s the American dream played out at 24 frames per second.

When Sumner’s publicity exaggerations were discovered in 2006, few seemed to care. Perhaps that’s because as a character, Rocky did more than go toe-to-toe with Apollo Creed. At a time when Taxi Driver’s sociopathic antihero Travis Bickle preyed on audience fears and Network played to the bleak pessimism of a struggling nation, Rocky reminded the country what it means to hope. As Sylvester Stallone once said, “If I say it, you won’t believe it. But when Rocky said it, it was the truth.”

If you’re a pop culture junkie with a thirst for the open road, consider driving to one of the attractions featured in the infographic below.

UK-based travel broker AttractionTix located the real-life filming locations of movies and TV shows including Friends, Harry Potter, Gilmore Girls, and Game of Thrones. To make the journey easy for fans, they listed the addresses below, along with other handy details including the logistics on how to get there, how long it takes to see the sites, and the best time to go. A word to the wise: Some of these filming locations are abroad, so you’ll have to book a plane ticket and rent a car overseas before channeling your inner Jack Kerouac.